Lillian Moller Gilbreth Career What type of work did Lillian do? For more than forty years, Gilbreth's career combined psychology with the study of scientific management and engineering. What other type of work did she do? In addition to jointly running Gilbreth Incorporated, their business and engineering consulting firm, Lillian and Frank wrote numerous publications as sole authors, What type of books did she write? more than fifty papers on a variety of scientific topics. Did she write anything else? I don't know. Did she have any other career highlights? she became the first American engineer ever to create a synthesis of psychology and scientific management. Why did they write as sole authors? I don't know. Is there anything else interesting? Althhough her credentials included a doctorate in psychology, she is less frequently credited in their joing publications than her husband, who did not attend college.
What other things did the Gilbreths do?
Besides joint publications, what other things did the Frank and Lillian Moller Gilbreth do?
For more than forty years, Gilbreth's career combined psychology with the study of scientific management and engineering. She also included her perspectives as a wife and mother in her research, writing, and consulting work. Gilbreth became a pioneer in what is now known as Industrial and organizational psychology. She helped industrial engineers recognized the importance of the psychological dimensions of work. In addition, she became the first American engineer ever to create a synthesis of psychology and scientific management. (Gilbreth introduced the concept of using psychology to study management at the Dartmouth College Conference on Scientific Management in 1911.)  In addition to jointly running Gilbreth Incorporated, their business and engineering consulting firm, Lillian and Frank wrote numerous publications as sole authors, as well as co-authoring multiple books and more than fifty papers on a variety of scientific topics. However, in their joint publications Lillian was not always named as a co-author, possibly due to publishers' concerns about a female writer. Althhough her credentials included a doctorate in psychology, she is less frequently credited in their joing publications than her husband, who did not attend college.  The Gilbreths were certain that the revolutionary ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor would be neither easy to implement nor sufficient; their implementation would require hard work by engineers and psychologists to make them successful. The Gilbreths also believed that scientific management as formulated by Taylor fell short when it came to managing the human element on the shop floor. The Gilbreths helped formulate a constructive critique of Taylorism; this critique had the support of other successful managers. CANNOTANSWER
The Gilbreths helped formulate a constructive critique of Taylorism; this critique had the support of other successful managers.
Lillian Evelyn Gilbreth ( Moller; May 24, 1878 – January 2, 1972) was an American psychologist, industrial engineer, consultant, and educator who was an early pioneer in applying psychology to time-and-motion studies. She was described in the 1940s as "a genius in the art of living." Gilbreth, one of the first female engineers to earn a Ph.D., is considered to be the first industrial/organizational psychologist. She and her husband, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, were efficiency experts who contributed to the study of industrial engineering, especially in the areas of motion study and human factors. Cheaper by the Dozen (1948) and Belles on Their Toes (1950), written by two of their children (Ernestine and Frank Jr.) tell the story of their family life and describe how time-and-motion studies were applied to the organization and daily activities of their large family. Both books were later made into feature films.

Early life and education 

Lillie Evelyn Moller was born in Oakland, California, on May 24, 1878, to Annie () and William Moller, a builder's supply merchant. She was their second child and the eldest of the family's nine surviving children. Their first child, Anna Adelaide, had died at age four months. Her parents, of German ancestry, were well to-do. Educated at home until the age of nine, Moller began formal schooling in the first grade at a public elementary school and was rapidly promoted through the grade levels. She was elected vice president of her senior class at Oakland High School and graduated with exemplary grades in May 1896.

Although Moller wanted to go to college, her father was opposed to such education for his daughters. So she did not take all the required college preparatory courses in high school. She did persuade her father to let her try college for a year and was admitted to the University of California on condition she take the missing Latin course in her first semester. In August 1896 Moller was one of 300 entering students. The University of California at that time was housed in four buildings in the hills above the little town of Berkeley. It charged no tuition for California residents and was underfunded. Classes were large and many were held in tents. There were no dormitories; men lived in nearby boarding houses and women commuted from home.

Moller did well enough during her first year, coming in near the top of her class, that her father agreed to her continuing her education. She commuted from home on the streetcar, and in the evenings helped her mother with the household and her siblings with their homework. She majored in English, also studying philosophy and psychology, and had enough education courses to earn a teaching certificate. She also won a prize for poetry and acted in student plays. In the spring of her senior year the new university president, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, asked her to be one of the student speakers at the commencement ceremonies. On May 16, 1900, she graduated from the university and became the first woman to speak at a University of California commencement. The title of her speech was "Life: A Means or an End".

Moller had begun to think of a professional career rather than staying at home after graduation. She now wished to be called Lillian, a more dignified name for a university graduate she felt, and left home to enroll in graduate school at Columbia University in New York City. Her literature professor Charles Gayley had suggested she study there with Brander Matthews. Graduate enrollment at Columbia was almost half women at the time, but Matthews would not allow them in his classes. Instead, she studied literature with George Edward Woodberry. A lasting influence was her study with the psychologist Edward Thorndike, newly appointed at Columbia. Though she became ill with pleurisy and was brought home by her father, she continued to refer to him in her later work. Back in California, she returned to the University of California in August 1901 to work toward a master's degree in literature. Under the supervision of Gayley, she wrote a thesis on Ben Jonson's play Bartholomew Fair, and received her master's degree in the spring of 1902.

Moller began studies for a Ph.D. at the University of California, but took time off to travel through Europe in the spring of 1903. Following her marriage to Frank Bunker Gilbreth in 1904 and relocation to New York, she completed a dissertation for a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1911, but was not awarded the degree due to her noncompliance with residency requirements for doctoral candidates. The dissertation was published as The Psychology of Management: The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and Installing Methods of Least Waste in 1914.

After the Gilbreths relocated their family to Providence, Rhode Island, Lillian enrolled at Brown University. She earned a Ph.D. in applied psychology in 1915, which made her the first of the pioneers of industrial management to have a doctorate. The topic of her dissertation was efficient teaching methods and titled Some Aspects of Eliminating Waste in Teaching.

Marriage and family 

Lillian Moller met Frank Bunker Gilbreth in June 1903 in Boston, Massachusetts, en route to Europe with her chaperone, who was Frank's cousin.  He had apprenticed in several building trades in the East and established a contracting business with offices in Boston, New York, and London.

The couple married on October 19, 1904, in Oakland, California, and settled in New York. They later moved to Providence, Rhode Island, and eventually relocated their family to Montclair, New Jersey. 

As planned, the Gilbreths became the parents of a large family that included twelve children. One died young in 1912; one was still-born in 1915; and eleven of them lived to adulthood, including Ernestine Gilbreth, Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr., and Robert Moller Gilbreth.

After Frank died of a heart attack on June 14, 1924, Lillian never remarried.

Career 

For more than forty years, Gilbreth's career combined psychology with the study of scientific management and engineering. She also included her perspectives as a wife and mother in her research, writing, and consulting work. Gilbreth became a pioneer in what is now known as industrial and organizational psychology. She helped industrial engineers recognize the importance of the psychological dimensions of work. In addition, she became the first American engineer ever to create a synthesis of psychology and scientific management. (Gilbreth introduced the concept of using psychology to study management at the Dartmouth College Conference on Scientific Management in 1911.)

In addition to jointly running Gilbreth, Incorporated, their business and engineering consulting firm, Lillian and Frank wrote numerous publications as sole authors, as well as co-authoring multiple books and more than fifty papers on a variety of scientific topics. However, in their joint publications Lillian was not always named as a co-author, possibly due to publishers' concerns about a female writer. Although her credentials included a doctorate in psychology, she is less frequently credited in their joint publications than her husband, who did not attend college.

The Gilbreths were certain that the revolutionary ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor would be neither easy to implement nor sufficient; their implementation would require hard work by engineers and psychologists to make them successful. The Gilbreths also believed that scientific management as formulated by Taylor fell short when it came to managing the human element on the shop floor. The Gilbreths helped formulate a constructive critique of Taylorism; this critique had the support of other successful managers.

After Frank's passing and the mourning period, Lillian found that the homages to her husband were not a sign of her own taking, when three of her biggest clients didn't renew or cancelled contracts.  Close associates offered her employment in their firms, but she wanted to keep Frank's business afloat.

Time, motion, and fatigue study

Gilbreth and her husband were equal partners in the engineering and management consulting firm of Gilbreth, Incorporated. She continued to lead the company for decades after his death in 1924. The Gilbreths, both pioneers in scientific management, were especially adept at performing time-and-motion studies. They named their methodology the Gilbreth System and used the slogan, "The One Best Way to Do Work," to promote it. The Gilbreths also developed a new technique for their studies that used a motion-picture camera to record work processes. These filmed observations enabled the Gilbreths to redesign machinery to better suit workers' movements to improve efficiency and reduce fatigue. Their research on fatigue study was a forerunner to ergonomics. In addition, the Gilbreths applied a human approach to scientific management to develop innovations in workplace efficiency, such as improved lighting and regular breaks, as well as ideas for workplace psychological well-being, such as suggestion boxes and free books.

Domestic management and home economics 

Gilbreth collaborated with her husband until his death in 1924. Afterwards, she continued to research, write, and teach, in addition to consulting with businesses and manufacturers. She also participated in professional organizations such as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers until her own death nearly fifty years later in 1972. In addition, Gilbreth turned her attention to the home, despite her aversion to housework and the fact that she had long employed full-time household help. Her children once described her kitchen as a "model of inefficiency."

Due to discrimination within the engineering community, Gilbreth shifted her efforts toward research projects in the female-friendly arena of domestic management and home economics. She applied the principles of scientific management to household tasks and "sought to provide women with shorter, simpler, and easier ways of doing housework to enable them to seek paid employment outside the home." The Gilbreth children often took part in the experiments.

In addition, Gilbreth was instrumental in the development of the modern kitchen, creating the "work triangle" and linear-kitchen layouts that are often used today. In the late 1920s, she collaborated with Mary E. Dillon, President of Brooklyn Borough Gas Company on the creation of an efficient kitchen, equipped with gas powered appliances and named the Kitchen Practical. Inspired by Dillon's criticisms of her own kitchen, it was designed on three principles: the correct and uniform height of working surfaces; a circular work place; and a general “circular routing of working”, all carefully analyzed to reduce the time and effort required in the preparation of meals. It was unveiled in 1929 at a Women's Exposition.

She is also credited with the invention of the foot-pedal trash can, adding shelves to the inside of refrigerator doors (including the butter tray and egg keeper), and wall-light switches, all now standard. Gilbreth filed numerous patents for her designs, including one to improve the electric can opener and another for a wastewater hose for washing machines. When Gilbreth was an industrial engineer working at General Electric, she "interviewed over 4,000 women to design the proper height for stoves, sinks, and other kitchen fixtures as she worked on improving kitchen designs".

After World War I the Gilbreths did pioneering work with in the rehabilitation of war-veteran amputees. Lillian continued consulting with businesses and manufacturers after Frank's death. Her clients included Johnson & Johnson and Macy's, among others.  Lillian spent three years at Macy's to find solutions in their sales and human resource issues.  Solutions included changing light fixtures to reduce eye fatigue and eliminating duplicate recordings of sales checks.

In 1926, when Johnson & Johnson hired her as a consultant to do marketing research on sanitary napkins, Gilbreth and the firm benefited in three ways. First, Johnson & Johnson could use her training as a psychologist in the measurement and analysis of attitudes and opinions. Second, it could give her experience as an engineer specializing in the interaction between bodies and material objects. Third, her public image as a mother and a modern career woman could help the firm build consumer trust in its products. In addition to her work with Johnson & Johnson, Gilbreth was instrumental in the design of a desk in cooperation with IBM  for display at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933

Volunteer work and government service 

Gilbreth continued her private consulting practice while serving as a volunteer and an adviser to several government agencies and nonprofit groups. In 1927 she became a charter member of the Altrusa Club of New York City, an organization for Professional and Business Women started in 1917 for the purpose of providing community service Gilbreth's government work began as a result of her longtime friendship with Herbert Hoover and his wife Lou Henry Hoover, both of whom she had known in California; (Gilbreth had presided over the Women's Branch of the Engineers' Hoover for President campaign.)

Lou Hoover urged Gilbreth to join the Girl Scouts as a consultant in 1929. She remained active in the organization for more than twenty years, becoming a member of its board of directors. During the Great Depression President Hoover appointed Gilbreth to the Organization on Unemployment Relief as head of the "Share the Work" program. In 1930, under the Hoover administration, she headed the women's section of the President's Emergency Committee for Employment and helped to gain the cooperation of women's groups for reducing unemployment. During World War II Gilbreth continued advising governmental groups and also provided expertise on education and labor issues (especially women in the workforce) for organizations such as the War Manpower Commission, the Office of War Information, and the U.S. Navy. In her later years, Gilbreth served on the Chemical Warfare Board and on Harry Truman's Civil Defense Advisory Council.  During the Korean War she served on the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.

Author and educator
Gilbreth had a lifelong interest in teaching and education. As an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, she took enough education courses to earn a teacher's certificate, and her doctoral dissertation at Brown University was on applying the principles of scientific management to secondary school teaching.

While residing in Providence, Rhode Island, Gilbreth and her husband taught free, two-week-long summer schools in scientific management from 1913 to 1916. The Gilbreths also discussed teaching the Gilbreth System of time-and-motion study to members of industry, but it was not until after her husband's death in 1924 that she created a formal motion-study course. Gilbreth presented this idea at the First Prague International Management Congress in Prague in July 1924. Her first course began in January 1925. Gilbreth's classes offered to "prepare a member of an organization, who has adequate training both in scientific method and in plant problems, to take charge of Motion Study work in that organization." Coursework included laboratory projects and field trips to private firms to witness the application of scientific management. She ran a total of seven motion study courses out of her home in Montclair, New Jersey until 1930.

To earn additional income to support her large family, Gilbreth delivered numerous addresses to business and industry gatherings, as well as on college and university campuses such as Harvard, Yale, Colgate, the University of Michigan, MIT, Stanford, and Purdue University. In 1925 she succeeded her husband as a visiting lecturer at Purdue, where he had been delivering annual lectures. In 1935 she became a professor of management at Purdue's School of Mechanical Engineering, and the country's first female engineering professor. She was promoted to a full professor at Purdue in 1940. Gilbreth divided her time between Purdue's departments of industrial engineering, industrial psychology, home economics, and the dean's office, where she consulted on careers for women. In cooperation with Marvin Mundel, Gilbreth established and supervised a time-and-motion-study laboratory at Purdue's School of Industrial Engineering. She also demonstrated how time-and-motion studies could be used in agricultural studies and later transferred motion-study techniques to the home economics department under the banner of "work simplification". Gilbreth retired from Purdue's faculty in 1948.

After Gilbreth's retirement from Purdue, she continued to travel and deliver lectures. She also taught at several other colleges and universities, and became head of the Newark College of Engineering in 1941. Gilbreth was appointed the Knapp Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin's School of Engineering in 1955. She also taught at Bryn Mawr College and Rutgers University. Whilst teaching at Bryn Mawr, she met then student of social economy, Anne Gillespie Shaw, who later worked for Gilbreth Management Consultants, doing commercial research studies and became a lifelong friend and colleague. In 1964, at the age of eighty-six, Gilbreth became resident lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1968, when her health finally began to fail, Gilbreth retired from her active public life and eventually entered a nursing home.

Death and legacy
Gilbreth died of a stroke on January 2, 1972, in Phoenix, Arizona at the age of ninety-three. Her ashes were scattered at sea.

Gilbreth was best known for her work as an industrial engineer and a pioneer in the field of management theory. Dubbed "America's first lady of engineering," she brought her training in psychology to time-and-motion studies and demonstrated how companies and industries could improve their management techniques, efficiency, and productivity. Gilbreth's extensive research and writings on her own and in collaboration with her husband emphasized "the human element in scientific management." Her expertise and major contribution to the field of scientific management was integrating the psychological and mental processes with the time-and-motion studies. She also helped make these types of studies widely accepted. In addition, Gilbreth was among the first to establish industrial engineering curricula in college and university engineering schools. Gilbreth's book, The Psychology of Management (1914), was an early major work in the history of engineering thought and the first to combine psychology with elements of management theory. Major repositories of Gilbreth materials are at the Archives Center of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., and at Purdue University Library, Archives and Special Collections, at West Lafayette, Indiana.

Gilbreth also made contributions on behalf of women. Her pioneering work in industrial engineering influenced women in the field.  In addition to her lectures on various engineering topics, she encouraged women to study industrial engineering and management. Purdue awarded its first Ph.D. in engineering to a woman in 1950, two years after Gilbreth retired from the university.

Several engineering awards have been named in Gilbreth's honor. The National Academy of Engineering established the Lillian M. Gilbreth Lectureships in 2001 to recognize outstanding young American engineers. The highest honor bestowed by the Institute of Industrial Engineers is the Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Industrial Engineering Award for "those who have distinguished themselves through contributions to the welfare of mankind in the field of industrial engineering".  The Lillian M. Gilbreth Distinguished Professor award at Purdue University is bestowed on a member of the industrial engineering department. The Society of Women Engineers awards the Lillian Moller Gilbreth Memorial Scholarship to female engineering undergraduates.

Two of the Gilbreth children also paid tribute to their mother in books about their family life. Cheaper by the Dozen (1948), a bestseller by Gilbreth's son, Frank Jr., and daughter, Ernestine, was made into a motion picture in 1950 starring Myrna Loy as Lillian and Clifton Webb as Frank. The book's sequel, Belles on Their Toes (1950), also written by Frank Jr. and Ernestine, was made into a motion picture sequel in 1952. Frank Jr. also paid tribute to his mother in Time Out for Happiness (1972).

In 2018, the College of Engineering at Purdue University established the prestigious Lillian Gilbreth Postdoctoral Fellowship Program to attract and prepare outstanding individuals with recently awarded PhDs for a career in engineering academia through interdisciplinary research, training, and professional development.

Awards and honors
Gilbreth received numerous awards and honors for her contributions.
 Gilbreth is the recipient of twenty-three honorary degrees from such schools as Rutgers University, Princeton University, Brown University, Smith College, and the University of Michigan. 
 Her portrait hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. 
 The Gilbreth Engineering Library at Purdue University is named in honor of Lillian and Frank Gilbreth.
 In 1921 Lillian Gilbreth was the second person to be named an honorary member of the American Society of Industrial Engineers. 
She joined the British Women's Engineering Society in 1924.
 Gilbreth was accepted to the membership of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1926, becoming its second female member.
 In 1931 she received the first Gilbreth Medal, which was initiated in honor of her late husband. 
 In 1941 the Purdue University chapter of Mortar Board, a national honor society, named Gilbreth an honorary member.
 In 1944 the American Society of Mechanical Engineers awarded Gilbreth and her husband (posthumously) the Henry Laurence Gantt Medal for their contributions to industrial engineering.
 In 1950 Gilbreth became the first honorary member of the newly created Society of Women Engineers.
 In 1951 she was awarded the Wallace Clark Award.
 The University of California's alumni association named Gilbreth the 1954 Alumna of the Year.
 In 1965 Gilbreth became the first woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering. 
 In 1966 Gilbreth became the first woman to receive the Hoover Medal.
She was made an honorary Member of the British Women's Engineering Society in 1967.
 Gilbreth was a recipient of Gold Medal award from the National Institute of Social Sciences.
 In 1984 the U.S. Postal Service issued a 40-cent Great Americans series postage stamp in Gilbreth's honor,
In 1995, Gilbreth was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Selected published works
 A Primer of Scientific Management (1912), co-authored with Frank B. Gilbreth
 The Psychology of Management: the Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and Installing Methods of Least Waste (1914)
 Motion Models (1915) with Frank B. Gilbreth
 Applied Motion Study; A collection of papers on the efficient method to industrial preparedness. (1917) with Frank B. Gilbreth
 Fatigue Study: The Elimination of Humanity's Greatest Unnecessary Waste; a First Step in Motion Study] (1916) with Frank B. Gilbreth
 Motion Study for the Handicapped (1920) with Frank B. Gilbreth
 The Quest of the One Best Way: A Sketch of the Life of Frank Bunker Gilbreth (1925)
 The Home-maker and Her Job (1927)
 Living With Our Children (1928)
 Normal Lives for the Disabled (1948), with Edna Yost
 The Foreman in Manpower Management (1947), with Alice Rice Cook
 Management in the Home: Happier Living Through Saving Time and Energy (1954), with Orpha Mae Thomas and Eleanor Clymer
 As I Remember: An Autobiography (1998), published posthumously

Notes

References 

 
 
 
 
 
 "Lillian Moller Gilbreth and the Rise of Modern Industrial Engineering," in  
 
 
 
 Yost, Edna, "Lillian Moller Gilbreth" in

Further reading

External links 

 
 
 Widening Horizons - Dr. Lillian m. Gilbreth
 Biography
 Biography and Index to Purdue University Library's vast holdings of Gilbreth papers
 A 1955 newspaper interview with Gilbreth
 , comprehensive family and professional history.
 Podcast (with transcript) of interview with Gilbreth's biographer Jane Lancaster, from the Lemelson Center
 Lillian Gilbreth Keynote Speech, Society of Women Engineers National Convention, 1957
 

1878 births
1972 deaths
American industrial engineers
American people of German descent
American women educators
American women engineers
American women psychologists
Brown University alumni
Engineers from California
Engineers from New Jersey
Educators from New Jersey
Girl Scouts of the USA people
Henry Laurence Gantt Medal recipients
People from Montclair, New Jersey
People from Phoenix, Arizona
Time and motion study
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Writers from Oakland, California
A time and motion study (or time-motion study) is a business efficiency technique combining the Time Study work of Frederick Winslow Taylor with the Motion Study work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth (the same couple as is best known through the biographical 1950 film and book Cheaper by the Dozen). It is a major part of scientific management (Taylorism). After its first introduction, time study developed in the direction of establishing standard times, while motion study evolved into a technique for improving work methods. The two techniques became integrated and refined into a widely accepted method applicable to the improvement and upgrading of work systems. This integrated approach to work system improvement is known as methods engineering and it is applied today to industrial as well as service organizations, including banks, schools and hospitals.

Time studies 
Time study is a direct and continuous observation of a task, using a timekeeping device (e.g., decimal minute stopwatch, computer-assisted electronic stopwatch, and videotape camera) to record the time taken to accomplish a task and it is often used when:
 there are repetitive work cycles of short to long duration,
 wide variety of dissimilar work is performed, or
 process control elements constitute a part of the cycle.

The Industrial Engineering Terminology Standard, defines time study as "a work measurement technique consisting of careful time measurement of the task with a time measuring instrument, adjusted for any observed variance from normal effort or pace and to allow adequate time for such items as foreign elements, unavoidable or machine delays, rest to overcome fatigue, and personal needs."

The systems of time and motion studies are frequently assumed to be interchangeable terms, descriptive of equivalent theories. However, the underlying principles and the rationale for the establishment of each respective method are dissimilar, despite originating within the same school of thought.

The application of science to business problems, and the use of time-study methods in standard setting and the planning of work, was pioneered by Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor liaised with factory managers and from the success of these discussions wrote several papers proposing the use of wage-contingent performance standards based on scientific time study. At its most basic level time studies involved breaking down each job into component parts, timing each part and rearranging the parts into the most efficient method of working. By counting and calculating, Taylor wanted to transform management, which was essentially an oral tradition, into a set of calculated and written techniques.

Taylor and his colleagues placed emphasis on the content of a fair day's work, and sought to maximize productivity irrespective of the physiological cost to the worker. For example, Taylor thought unproductive time usage (soldiering) to be the deliberate attempt of workers to promote their best interests and to keep employers ignorant of how fast work could be carried out. This instrumental view of human behavior by Taylor prepared the path for human relations to supersede scientific management in terms of literary success and managerial application.

Direct time study procedure 
Following is the procedure developed by Mikell Groover for a direct time study:
 Define and document the standard method.
 Divide the task into work elements.
 These first two steps are conducted prior to the actual timing. They familiarize the analyst with the task and allow the analyst to attempt to improve the work procedure before defining the standard time.
 Time the work elements to obtain the observed time for the task.
 Evaluate the worker's pace relative to standard performance (performance rating), to determine the normal time.
 Note that steps 3 and 4 are accomplished simultaneously.  During these steps, several different work cycles are timed, and each cycle performance is rated independently. Finally, the values collected at these steps are averaged to get the normalized time.
 Apply an allowance to the normal time to compute the standard time. The allowance factors that are needed in the work are then added to compute the standard time for the task.

Conducting time studies 
According to good practice guidelines for production studies  a comprehensive time study consists of:
 Study goal setting;
 Experimental design;
 Time data collection;
 Data analysis;
 Reporting.
Easy analysis of working areas

The collection of time data can be done in several ways, depending on study goal and environmental conditions. Time and motion data can be captured with a common stopwatch, a handheld computer or a video recorder.  There are a number of dedicated software packages used to turn a palmtop or a handheld PC into a time study device. As an alternative, time and motion data can be collected automatically from the memory of computer-control machines (i.e. automated time studies).

Criticisms 
In response to Taylor's time studies and view of human nature, many strong criticisms and reactions were recorded. Unions, for example, regarded time study as a disguised tool of management designed to standardize and intensify the pace of production. Similarly, individuals such as Gilbreth (1909), Cadbury and Marshall heavily criticized Taylor and pervaded his work with subjectivity. For example, Cadbury in reply to Thompson stated that under scientific management employee skills and initiatives are passed from the individual to management, a view reiterated by Nyland. In addition, Taylor's critics condemned the lack of scientific substance in his time studies, in the sense that they relied heavily on individual interpretations of what workers actually do. However, the value in rationalizing production is indisputable and supported by academics such as Gantt, Ford and Munsterberg, and Taylor society members Mr C.G. Renold, Mr W.H. Jackson and Mr C.B. Thompson.
Proper time studies are based on repeated observation, so that motions performed on the same part differently by one or many workers can be recorded, to determine those values that are truly repetitive and measurable.

Motion studies 
In contrast to, and motivated by, Taylor's time study methods, the Gilbreths proposed a technical language, allowing for the analysis of the labor process in a scientific context. The Gilbreths made use of scientific insights to develop a study method based upon the analysis of "work motions", consisting in part of filming the details of a worker's activities and their body posture while recording the time. The films served two main purposes. One was the visual record of how work had been done, emphasizing areas for improvement. Secondly, the films also served the purpose of training workers about the best way to perform their work. This method allowed the Gilbreths to build on the best elements of these workflows and to create a standardized best practice.

Taylor vs. the Gilbreths 
Although for Taylor, motion studies remained subordinate to time studies, the attention he paid to the motion study technique demonstrated the seriousness with which he considered the Gilbreths’ method. The split with Taylor in 1914, on the basis of attitudes to workers, meant the Gilbreths had to argue contrary to the trade unionists, government commissions and Robert Hoxie who believed scientific management was unstoppable. The Gilbreths were charged with the task of proving that motion study particularly, and scientific management generally, increased industrial output in ways which improved and did not detract from workers' mental and physical strength. This was no simple task given the propaganda fuelling the Hoxie report and the consequent union opposition to scientific management. In addition, the Gilbreths credibility and academic success continued to be hampered by Taylor who held the view that motion studies were nothing more than a continuation of his work.

While both Taylor and the Gilbreths continue to be criticized for their respective work, it should be remembered that they were writing at a time of industrial reorganization and the emergence of large, complex organizations with new forms of technology. Furthermore, to equate scientific management merely with time and motion study and consequently labor control not only misconceives the scope of scientific management, but also misinterprets Taylor's incentives for proposing a different style of managerial thought.

Health care time and motion study
A Health care time and motion study is used to research and track the efficiency and quality of health care workers.  In the case of nurses, numerous programs have been initiated to increase the percent of a shift nurses spend providing direct care to patients. Prior to interventions nurses were found to spend ~20% of their time doing direct care.  After focused intervention, some hospitals doubled that number, with some even exceeding 70% of shift time with patients, resulting in reduced errors, codes, and falls.

Methods
External observer: Someone visually follows the person being observed, either contemporaneously or via video recording.  This method presents additional expense as it usually requires a 1 to 1 ratio of research time to subject time.  An advantage is the data can be more consistent, complete, and accurate than with self-reporting.
Self-reporting: Self-reported studies require the target to record time and activity data.  This can be done contemporaneously by having subjects stop and start a timer when completing a task, through work sampling where the subject records what they are doing at determined or random intervals, or by having the subject journal activities at the end of the day. Self-reporting introduces errors that may not be present through other methods, including errors in temporal perception and memory, as well as the motivation to manipulate the data.
Automation: Motion can be tracked with GPS.  Documentation activities can be tracked through monitoring software embedded in the applications used to create documentation.  Badge scans can also create a log of activity.

See also 

 Ergonomics
 Human factors
 Methods-time measurement
 Memo motion
 Predetermined motion time system
 Standard time
 Industrial Engineering
 Evolutionary economics

References

 
Economic efficiency
Industrial engineering
Articles containing video clips Frank Bunker Gilbreth (July 7, 1868 – June 14, 1924) was an American engineer, consultant, and author known as an early advocate of scientific management and a pioneer of time and motion study, and is perhaps best known as the father and central figure of Cheaper by the Dozen.

Both he and his wife Lillian Moller Gilbreth were industrial engineers and efficiency experts who contributed to the study of industrial engineering in fields such as motion study and human factors.

Biography

Early life and education 
Gilbreth was born in Fairfield, Maine, on July 7, 1868. He was the third child and only son of John Hiram Gilbreth and Martha Bunker Gilbreth. His mother had been a schoolteacher. His father owned a hardware store and was a stockbreeder. When Gilbreth was three and a half years old his father died suddenly from pneumonia.

After his father's death his mother moved the family to Andover, Massachusetts, to find better schools for her children. The substantial estate left by her husband was managed by her husband's family. By the fall of 1878 the money had been lost or stolen and Martha Gilbreth had to find a way to make a living. She moved the family to Boston where there were good public schools. She opened a boarding house since the salary of a schoolteacher would not support the family.

Gilbreth was not a good student. He attended Rice Grammar School, but his mother was concerned enough to teach him at home for a year. He attended Boston's English High School, and his grades improved when he became interested in his science and math classes. He took the entrance examinations for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but wanted his mother to be able to give up the boarding house. He decided to go to work rather than to college.

Whidden Construction Company
Renton Whidden, Gilbreth's old Sunday School teacher, hired him for his building company. He was to start as a laborer, learn the various building trades, and work his way up in the firm. In July 1885 at age 17 he started as a bricklayer's helper. As he learned bricklaying he noticed the many variations in the bricklayers' methods and efficiency. This began his interest in finding "the one best way" of executing any task. He quickly learned every part of building work and contracting, and advanced rapidly. He took night school classes to learn mechanical drawing. After five years he was a superintendent, which allowed his mother to give up her boarding house.

Using his observations of workmen laying brick, Gilbreth developed a multilevel scaffold that kept the bricks within easy reach of the bricklayer. He began patenting his innovations with this "Vertical Scaffold", then developed and patented the "Gilbreth Waterproof Cellar". He made innovations in concrete construction,as well. After ten years, at age 27, he was the chief superintendent. When after ten years the Whiddens were unwilling to make him a partner, he resigned to start his own company.

Career as general contractor
Gilbreth founded his own commercial contracting firm on April 1, 1895. For the next fifteen years, "Frank B. Gilbreth, General Contractor" and two subsidiary companies would build some 90 large-scale projects across the United States (along with two in Canada), including full scale factories, paper mills, canals, dams and powerhouses. The largest such project was a complete paper mill constructed in Canton, North Carolina in 1907-8, a $2 million facility consisting of more than thirty full-scale industrial buildings.

One Gilbreth construction project was the Simmons Hardware Company's Sioux City Warehouse. The architects had specified that hundreds of  hardened concrete piles (based on Gibreth's own patents for design and installation) were to be driven in to allow the soft ground to take the weight of two million bricks required to construct the building. The "Time and Motion" approach could be applied to the bricklaying and the transportation. The building was also required to support efficient input and output of deliveries via its own railroad switching facilities.

Gilbreth was also an inventor with thirteen patents, beginning in his years with the Whiddens, and had patent and product management offices in London and Berlin. Other than two projects in Ontario, Canada, he did not build any projects outside the United States.

Career as efficiency expert
Gilbreth changed careers to efficiency and management engineering with the close of his construction companies in about 1912. He eventually became an occasional lecturer at Purdue University, which houses his papers.

Gilbreth discovered his vocation as efficiency expert while still a young construction worker, when he sought ways to make bricklaying faster and easier. During the later part of his contracting career, this grew into a collaboration with his wife, Lillian Moller Gilbreth. Together they studied the work habits of manufacturing and clerical employees in all sorts of industries to find ways to increase output and make their jobs easier. He and Lillian founded a management consulting firm, Frank B. Gilbreth, Inc. (renamed Gilbreth, Inc. after his death), focusing on such endeavors.

Gilbreth was also an adamant champion of the "cost-plus-a-fixed sum" contract in his building contracting business. He described this method in an article in Industrial Magazine in 1907, comparing it to fixed price and guaranteed maximum price methods. Many of his prolific advertisements throughout the era boast of and recommend this as "their special method of construction."

Family 
Gilbreth married Lillian Evelyn Moller on October 19, 1904, in Oakland, California; they had 12 children. Their names were Anne Moller Gilbreth Barney (1905-1987), Mary Elizabeth Gilbreth (1906–1912), Ernestine Moller Gilbreth Carey (1908-2006), Martha Bunker Gilbreth Tallman (1909-1968), Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr. (1911-2001), William Moller Gilbreth (1912-1990), Lillian Gilbreth Johnson (1914-2001), Frederick Moller Gilbreth (1916-2015), Daniel Bunker Gilbreth (1917-2006), John Moller Gilbreth (1919-2002), Robert Moller Gilbreth (1920-2007), and Jane Moller Gilbreth Heppes (1922-2006); there was also a stillborn daughter (1915) who was not named.

Death 
Gilbreth died of a heart attack on June 14, 1924, at age 55. He was at the Lackawanna Terminal in Montclair, New Jersey, talking with his wife by telephone. Lillian outlived him by 48 years.

Work

Motion studies 

Gilbreth served as a major in the U.S. Army during World War I. His assignment was to find quicker and more efficient means of assembling and disassembling small arms. However, he was stricken with rheumatic fever and then pneumonia just weeks into his service, and spent four months in recovery before being discharged. The heart damage from this episode would contribute to his premature death six years later. According to Claude George (1968), Gilbreth reduced all motions of the hand into some combination of 17 basic motions. These included grasp, transport loaded, and hold. Gilbreth named the motions therbligs — "Gilbreth" spelled backwards with letters th transposed to their original order. He used a motion picture camera that was calibrated in fractions of minutes to time the smallest of motions in workers.

Their emphasis on the "one best way" and therbligs predates the development of continuous quality improvement (CQI), and the late 20th century understanding that repeated motions can lead to workers experiencing repetitive motion injuries.

Gilbreth was the first to propose the position of "caddy" (Gilbreth's term) to a surgeon, who handed surgical instruments to the surgeon as needed. Gilbreth also devised the standard techniques used by armies around the world to teach recruits how to rapidly disassemble and reassemble their weapons even when blindfolded or in total darkness.

Scientific management 
The work of the Gilbreths is often associated with that of Frederick Winslow Taylor, yet there was a substantial philosophical difference between the Gilbreths and Taylor. The symbol of Taylorism was the stopwatch; Taylor was concerned primarily with reducing process times. The Gilbreths, in contrast, sought to make processes more efficient by reducing the motions involved. They saw their approach as more concerned with workers' welfare than Taylorism, which workers themselves often perceived as concerned mainly with profit. This difference led to a personal rift between Taylor and the Gilbreths which, after Taylor's death, turned into a feud between the Gilbreths and Taylor's followers. After Frank's death, Lillian Gilbreth took steps to heal the rift; however, some friction remains over questions of history and intellectual property.

Fatigue study 
In conducting their Motion Study method to work, they found that the key to improving work efficiency was in reducing unnecessary motions.  Not only were some motions unnecessary, but they caused employee fatigue.  Their efforts to reduce fatigue included reduced motions, tool redesign, parts placement, and bench and seating height, for which they began to develop workplace standards. The Gilbreths' work broke ground for contemporary understanding of ergonomics.

Legacy 
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth often used their large family (and Frank himself) as guinea pigs in experiments. Their family exploits are lovingly detailed in the 1948 book Cheaper by the Dozen, written by son Frank Jr. and daughter Ernestine (Ernestine Gilbreth Carey). The book inspired two films of the same name. The first, in 1950, starred Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy. The second, in 2003, starred comedians Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt, and bears no resemblance to the book, except that it features a family with twelve children, and the wife's maiden name is Gilbreth. A 1952 sequel titled Belles on Their Toes chronicled the adventures of the Gilbreth family after Frank's 1924 death. A later biography of his parents, Time Out For Happiness, was written by Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr. alone in 1962.

The award for lifetime achievement by the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) is named in Frank and Lillian Gilbreth's honor.

His maxim of “I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it” is still commonly used today, although it is often misattributed to Bill Gates, who merely repeated the quote but did not originate it.

Selected publications 
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth wrote in collaboration, but Lillian's name was not included on the title page until after she earned her PhD.

References

Further reading
 
 
 
 
 
  Frank Gilbreth Jr. makes several errors of recollection in this otherwise significant letter-memoire.

External links 

 
 
 , comprehensive family and professional history.
 
 , books by and about the Gilbreths and Scientific Management
  An updated history of the Gilbreth family vacation home.

1868 births
1924 deaths
American industrial engineers
American business theorists
People from Fairfield, Maine
Military personnel from Maine
Purdue University faculty
People from Montclair, New Jersey
American bricklayers
Time and motion study
Articles containing video clips
Henry Laurence Gantt Medal recipients
Engineers from New Jersey
Writers from Maine
English High School of Boston alumni